Megabucks UK and basic services

From the archive, first published Friday 10th Feb 2006.

SIR - Bring out your dead, another casualty of cuts is about to be announced? The item about Suckley Post Offices evokes warm idyllic postcard images of rural Britain and I can almost hear the bell ringing as the shop door opens and smell the honeysuckle.

But nostalgia aside, this is a serious business. It seems community is a empty word as centralisation of just about everything strips villages of their identity. Rural communities are the poor cousin for resource allocation and priority. Across the country, village schools, community hospitals, police stations and bus services have faced the axe. Now Suckley, which lost its railway to Dr Beeching in the 1960s, might find itself without a post office along with countless others. Can't megabucks Britain, one of the world's richest countries afford the most basic of services?

ANDREW BROWN,

Worcester.

Archive Home